1 August (Part 1) - Cooking the books?
Nicholas Dowling expected to go to look at Bexley council’s accounts last Friday as he is entitled to do at this time of the year. He told them which subjects he was interested in. One might have expected someone from the Finance Department to turn up with a pile of ledgers from last year’s accounts and let him browse through them at his leisure - but not in Bexley. They told him they would need another week to get the books ready for him. Why? He only wanted to thumb through some figures that should be all signed and sealed by now. Did they need to go through them for a surreptitious re-editing?